The Canyon of Bones
A Barnaby Skye Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
With the trapping trade on the decline, mountain man Barnaby Skye takes work as a guide, leading a wealthy Englishman, Graves Duplessis Mercer, and two companions on an exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri River valleys.
Mercer is a peculiar employer. He has come to the American wilderness seeking weird, morbid, thrilling, preferably slightly salacious, material to write up for British tabloids. He has little interest in such amazing natural phenomena as the geysers of the Yellowstone country but is adept in ferreting out stories of cannibalism and similar atrocities.
To the Briton's disappointment, Skye has none of these to offer but does agree to take him to a Missouri River valley where gigantic bones of ancient monsters thrust out of canyon walls. Skye's Crow Indian wife, Victoria, warns that the bones are sacred among certain tribes, but Mercer insists on taking a "trophy" – a tooth from a tyrannosaurus-like fossil. This act nearly costs the lives of Mercer's party and its guide, Barnaby Skye.
Wheeler's Barnaby Skye, a deserter from the Royal Navy who becomes a legendary mountain man, has been called "the Horatio Hornblower of the Rocky Mountains."
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spur Award winner Wheeler adds this splendid 15th volume (after Fire Arrow) to his superb Skye's West series about redoubtable mountain man Barnaby Skye. It is the late 1850s and Skye, a deserter from the Royal Navy, and his Crow Indian wife, Victoria, agree that Skye should take a second Indian wife to produce a son. Skye marries Blue Dawn, a beautiful, young Shoshone woman, and the trio is hired to guide brash English explorer and journalist Graves Duplessis Mercer to see a mysterious canyon full of dinosaur bones. Skye, happy with two wives, doesn't care much for Mercer, whose arrogance and selfishness endangers the whole party. The details of Skye's courtship and wedding are hilarious, and the fieldcraft the group must employ to survive the harsh wilderness is suspenseful and instructive. Wheeler is one of the best western authors around today. He doesn't rely on epic battles or gunfights to tell his stories, relying instead on fascinating characters, vivid imagery, subtle action and carefully drawn historical detail.